


More Than Nerves

by L2SFL



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gladiator Shiro (Voltron), Illnesses, Introspection, Missing Scene, Near Death Experiences, Pain, Shiro (Voltron)'s Missing Year, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 15:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16349477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L2SFL/pseuds/L2SFL
Summary: A muscle spasm in the arena nearly costs Shiro his life. He knows they will only get worse.





	More Than Nerves

**Author's Note:**

> my third fill for the voltron bingo event! shiro card, "illness" prompt.  
> something i wrote in a quick attempt to break my writer's block.

It was spreading. The twitching, the spasms that made his hand tremble and release - always at the worst possible moments - had finally claimed his elbow.

He had nearly died because of it.

_ All he had to do was drive the sword down, clean through his opponent’s exposed calf. A non-fatal injury - one that would doom her to the Galra workforce. But there were worse fates, or so he told himself, and he would not murder for them. _

_ The sword shook in his hand. He grit his teeth and forced it steady. This was more than nerves - he’d seen too many terrified eyes and heard too many pleading voices to hesitate now, though each one still cut him to the core. No, this wasn’t nerves, but a familiar tingling that possessed his limb and made it its own, jerking it to the side though he willed it not to, sword driving down into empty space. _

_ Seizing his moment of weakness, the lithe beetle-like alien wrenched herself away from him. She kicked arena sand into his face, and he spluttered as he breathed it in, too focused on his arm - which had fallen uselessly to his side, fingers still softly twitching - to remember to hold his breath. There was a sharp pain in his side as her foot made contact with his ribs. He hit the floor, loosening his body to roll away from the kick. Wiping sand from his eyes with the (admittedly not much cleaner) sleeve of his shirt, he tried to force himself back to his feet. He made it to one knee before he was pinned back down. She knelt on his chest, her angular knees digging into the space between his ribs. He wheezed in one final breath before her three-fingered pincer-hands closed around his throat. _

_ “I’m sorry,” she rasped, “but I will not die today.” _

_ ‘Neither will I,’ thought Shiro, though he didn’t waste precious air on speech, ‘and neither will you.’ _

_ His left hand scrabbled beside him for the hilt of his sword. His vision was blackening around the edges; he raised his agitated right hand to one of her forearms and twisted, momentarily earning another snatch of air before she batted his arm away as if it were boneless. She squeezed tighter, digging her thumbs into the soft spots either side of his windpipe. He got halfway through a cough before spluttering on breath that couldn’t escape his lungs. His back arched involuntarily; his head was beginning to pound. He had maybe twenty seconds before unconsciousness claimed him. _

_ His fingertips brushed metal. With a final burst of energy from who-knows-where, he grasped the handle and heaved the sword skyward. The crowd bellowed and her eyes widened, catching on a split second too late. He pierced straight through her leg. Her body toppled off his and she howled, a sound like splintering wood, as she reached for the blade protruding from what he supposed could be called her thigh. She couldn’t pull it free; the moment her fingers so much as nudged the sword, she wrenched her hand back, gagging on her own breath. She stayed down for one second, two, three… _

_ The portcullis was rising, figures moving towards them across the sand. When Shiro was certain she would attack no more, he sagged back to the ground - that had been close, too close - and he waited for the guards to haul him back to his cell. _

He hadn’t come so close to losing a battle against another ordinary prisoner in a long time. In many ways, the progression was the worst part of this disease. Watching his abilities dwindle, knowing each day he deviated further from the peak physicality he’d worked so hard to maintain… it was as heartbreaking as it was infuriating. He had been ninety-ninth percentile on nearly every fitness test he’d taken prior to the mission, but none of that mattered when in the arena even the slightest mistake, the slightest spasm beyond his control, could cost his life.

He’d wanted a memorable final mission, that was all. A final realisation of his childhood dream; one last chance to prove himself before his body killed him. And what had he got? An alien abduction, because apparently going home to die surrounded by friends and family was too much to ask for.

His arm was still complaining. Loudly. A squeezing sensation, vice-like in strength, so tight it felt like the bones in his arm were grinding against each other every time he moved. He had been ill long enough to know there wasn't much he could do about it besides wait out the pain - and hope that the Galra didn’t demand another fight in the meantime. If only they hadn’t confiscated his wristband. It wasn’t a cure, far from it, but the electrical stimulation helped with the tension more than any painkiller could. At the very least, the treatment was supposed to buy him more time.

He rubbed his left thumb along the inside of his forearm, trying to massage out some of the tension where possible. The relief was weak and temporary, but it was better than nothing. The fingers on his right hand felt distant, like they were attached to his body by string instead of muscle, though he found he could still move each of them in turn, thank goodness. The sensation would come back later. He hoped.

He cradled the arm to his chest and closed his eyes, head tilted back against the cold wall of his cell. He  _ needed  _ to get out of here. That thought was nothing new, but today it carried a new urgency - he needed to get out of here before the final sands in his hourglass trickled through.

Escape attempts were dangerous, of course. He had never heard of a successful one - but he’d seen the examples they made of those who failed. He knew that he would almost certainly die trying.

But what did that matter when his time was running out?


End file.
